Cherry Pie “Larabars”

When tons of folks started popping over from Glamour Magazine last week I figured I was being featured on “What NOT To Wear.” Ha! Turns out someone just mentioned these sweet little morsels. Ready in 5 minutes!

Crispy Nuts

Magnesium is needed for over 300 biochemical reactions in the body, but most of us are deficient in it. Good news, though! Nuts are a great source of magnesium IF they have been properly prepared to reduce phytates.

Raw Cheese

“Cheese from 100% grass-fed cows has a perfect omega 6:3 ratio of 2:1. It also contains 5x the amount of Conjugated Linoleic Acid (CLA), which is an extraordinarily powerful cancer fighting nutrient.

CLA is known to boost metabolism and fat burning while enhancing natural immunity. This form of cheese is also a great source of highly bioavailable calcium & magnesium, amino acids and vitamin A, D3, & K2.”¹

Fruit Leather

A delicious and cost effective way to use up extra fruit before it goes bad! Check out the instructions here.

*Pssst! Have you noticed by now that dehydrators are reaaaally handy when it comes to making snacks? Wondering if you should get one? I used a garage sale Nesco for years until I burned out the motor , then upgraded to the excalibur dehydrator. I LOVE my excalibur because it allows me to do huge batches of nuts and make coconut flour/jerky/fruit rolls ups all at the same time, but if you’re not sure you’ll use one all the time I recommend getting a cheap one to start with.

Bubbies Pickles

As I wrote about here, Bubbies pickles are truly fermented with artisanal well water (no fluoride) and mineral rich salts.

They’re a great thing to have around when you’re too busy to make your own.

Seaweed

A great alternative to chips, toasted and seasoned seaweed is rich in minerals such as iodine, calcium, sodium, magnesium, potassium, iron, zinc, copper and selenium.

Unfortunately seaweed snacks are made with canola or safflower oil. Safflower I don’t have a big problem with, but companies often switch between the two depending on what’s cheapest so you never know what you’re going to get. Fortunately, I recently discovered these mineral rich from Sea Snax that use olive oil instead.

Dried Anchovies

Boiled Eggs

They’re an excellent source of choline, selenium, iodine, and vitamin B2 and a good source of protein, molybdenum, phosphorus, vitamin B5, vitamin B12 and vitamin D.

Banana Walnut Muffins

Though I’ve made double and triple batches in an effort to freeze the extras, somehow these always disappear off my countertops! I’ve been assured, though, that they freeze very well, so feel free to grab one as you and the kids head out the door. It’ll thaw just in time for your mid-morning snack!

Marshmallows

No discussion of on-the-go snacks is complete without these fabulous marshmallows Jenni from The Urban Poser shared with us here. We store ours in wax paper bags and they hold up really well!

Ideas For Packing:

We use class storage at home, which is not usually welcome in places like the zoo, beach, etc., so on those days we use wax paper bags or Wexy bags, which is a biodegradable, washable bag decorated with colorful characters. For water we use the Berkey Sport Bottle, a portable water purifier which eliminates or reduces up to 99.9% of:

Questions about baby nutrition?

Photo credits: All photos belonging to The Urban Poser, Nourished Kitchen, and Health Home & Happiness were published with permission. The salmon jerky, fruit leather, cheese, and boiled egg are from Flickr.

Hi, I'm Mommypotamus. My mission is to help you put delicious, healthy meals on the table, find effective natural remedies for common complaints, make your own fuss-free personal care and home products, and save time and money in the process.

62 Responses to 21 Healthy “Grab And Go” Snacks Your Kids Will LOVE

You’re welcome, Elise Genta Sprenger! These are my fave portable “discoveries” for the past few years. It was hard to leave out some of our fave snacks that do better with proper utensils, though, so I’ll probably follow up with another post on that!

Setting Up
On the counter my mother would layout newspaper, the bowl of oil , the bowl of salt, the brush and the plate. The second plate is just stationed next to the stove.
Next take one sheet of seaweed place it on the newspaper, take the brush, dip it in oil and brush the sheet of seaweed, sprinkle on the salt, place that on the dish and then repeat.

Here’s the part that I had a lot of fun with. Bring the plate of prepared plate to the stove, heat up a pan but DO NOT OIL the pan. Take one of the sheets of prepped seaweed, be sure to hold the seaweed with your fingers in a pinching position. Then just sweep the back and front of the seaweed on the pan, keep doing this for say 10 seconds (be sure to check a bit though as temperatures of the pan definitely varies) Another way to check if it’s ready is to hold it up to the light and if it’s green it’s ready, then switch ends and toast the side that didn’t get swept. Transfer the prepared seaweed to a plate and then repeat. When all done just cut into squares.

On another note, I find it funny that these are now advertised as snacks. I’m korean so we always had this on our dinner table, we’d take a little square fill it with rice and other veg and a bit of meat and then just pop it in our mouths…mmmm…hungry.

Since you’re amazing at cooking things up and identified the problem with the type of oil I thought you might like to know about this. In Korea it’s called Gim, so if your nearby oriental grocery store owners are Korean you can always tell them you’d like to make your own and are looking for the seaweed to make this. Thought I’d mention this because for some reason at my nearby grocery store they only sell the premade one now and I have to get my mom to mail me some They also sell ones made with olive oil too.

Love this! And I love that you got a Nesco from a garage sale…I JUST found one last weekend and it already has made me so happy. It’s the bottom of the line with no temp controls, but it’s still awesome! At this moment it’s making banana chips and apple chips. =)

AWESOME list! Definitely saving on my Delicious.com! As for containers, we love the Foogo and Funtainers from Thermos. Foogo are plain, while Funtainers have characters, which we don’t need, but sometimes that’s just what’s the right size or cheapest. We use the 10oz. stainless Foogo bottle to pack milk, and it keeps it cold very well. Leaks are rare, and stem from mommy hurrying and not getting the silicone piece in just right, but we use them for both kids daily, and we rarely have leaks. The milk is still cold when they get home from school if there is any milk left, so they do a great job! The same types of insulated stainless bowls for soups and casseroles are also great. Otherwise I use Tupperware. It is still plastic, but Tupperware is BPA free and they have never used phthalates, and since my foods are placed in there at room temp, I don’t worry too much. They are modular and easy to clean, and TW puts materials info for all products on their website, as opposed to cheaper brands, so I at least know what I am using.

Yay for juicing, Andrea! I love fresh juices, but I personally don’t include kale because of it’s effects on the thyroid. There is a lot of info out there on the subject but I don’t know of a definitive article that will answer all your questions. Sarah at the Healthy Home Economist has a pretty good post on the subject though http://www.thehealthyhomeeconomist.com/kale-chips-to-protect-your-thyroid/

[…] Speaking Of My Older Kids . . . Please take them to the park to blow bubbles or kick the soccer ball around. Please do not feed them junk – they turn in to gremlins, I promise! Here are some healthy snack ideas they’ll love you for! […]

I see you mentioned a need for some good portable containers. I found these yesterday and can’t stop imagining possibilities for them! I know they’re BPA free, but I don’t know if they completely fit your desires. Nontheless, http://easylunchboxes.smugmug.com/

[…] telling you, if you don’t have alternatives, it’s easier to stand your ground! Here is a great list of real food snacks to get you going on replacing the processed box stuff. Which leads me to my next […]

[…] Speaking Of My Older Kids . . . Please take them to the park to blow bubbles or kick the soccer ball around. Please do not feed them junk – they turn in to gremlins, I promise! Here are some healthy snack ideas they’ll love! […]

I have this list posted to my “favorites” bar and reference it often. Today I clicked the link for the macaroons, but the recipe linked says “egg-free”… I was just wondering if maybe you meant to link to a different macaroon recipe, since you said “A perfect way to use up egg whites”? Just checking, thank you!
SaraA

I was searching for recipes for ice cream made without dairy.. , and your site was one of the links to click.. I clicked.. and am now entered to win a Berkey Filter system.. :).. you have a great blog and your pintrest is easy to follow..

Oh Mommypotamus, please help me. Another week of school lunches looms before me and between my 3 children I need healthy lunch boxes that contain no eggs, dairy or nuts (the nuts is a school thing, all of my kids can eat nuts). I also have been told by a certain 6 year old that if I send her anything made of coconut she’s flinging herself in front of a school bus. We’ve just come off almost 2 years of GAPS and currently can only tollerate small quantities of fresh ground Einkorn. Do you have any suggestions? (They love gummy stars and jerky but they only go so far…).

I finally managed to get my paws on some raw sunflower seeds that weren’t rancid and both of these cookie recipes turned out beautifully. I think they are better with almond flour but my girls were just so excited to have anything different that they were a huge hit. Thank you very much. I’m going to try to make potato chips this weekend…

You mentioned you were looking for a filter that takes out flourine. At my cousin’s recommendation we bought a Berky filter, berkey.com. The main filter is high density activated charcol with very fine pores. They have an additional flouride filter cartridge you can add. The cartridges are not cheep but they last so long they are quite reasonable in the long term. I found several web sites that recommended them as the best on the market.
I just found your site when a friend recommended your Gummy Stars. Keep up the fantastic work.

Just found your website (terrific!) and read this article today. The only issue I have is with the Bubbies pickles. Bubbies, as with almost all canned and bottled foods, contain calcium chloride as a firming agent. The problem with this is that calcium chloride is a dessicant, used as road salt on asphalt roads and used as a male animal sterilant. It will pit concrete and rust rebar. It is also used as an additive to plastics and fire extinguishers. I really don’t want to ingest this product, but as I mentioned, it is found in nearly all bottled and canned foods in the USA. Just a little info.